Are religious themes cropping up in more mainstream movies these days? Stephen Whitty, film critic for New Jersey’s largest newspaper, the Newark Star Ledger, thinks they may be. In a recent article Whitty connects the dots on a number of recent Hollywood offerings that touch on spiritual questions or themes of faith, from Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter, starring Matt Damon, to the Ed Norton/Robert De Niro prison film Stone, from Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger to the Disney sports film Secretariat.

“These aren’t tiny indies,” Whitty notes, “like the evangelical films that sprang up after The Passion of the Christ” (i.e., movies like Facing the Giants and One Night With the King). “No, these are the mainstream pictures … Faith-based film fans used to be seen as a niche audience. Now, in Hollywood, they’re just seen as the audience.”

If that’s true, it’s a potentially promising development, though the resulting films may be mixed. Obviously there’s no going back to the pervasive Judeo-Christian milieu of Golden Age Hollywood (though a film here or there, like Secretariat, may hearken back to that era). The actual content of these films, including the spiritual content, may be problematic, from the credulous spiritualism of Hereafter to what seems to be a muddle of Christian and New Age ideas in the sexually explicit Stone.

“C. S. Lewis once opined that rhetorical nonsense doesn’t become sense just by inserting the word ‘God’ into a sentence,” notes Ken Morefield in his review of Stone (Christianity Today Movies & TV). “Likewise, just because Stone is asking questions that are essentially ‘religious’ doesn’t necessarily transform a muddled movie into something insightful. Sometimes it just results in muddled ideas about spiritual subjects.” That doesn’t just apply to Stone, either.

Still, even muddled ideas about spiritual subjects might be better than no thinking about spiritual subjects at all. Hereafter may be a disappointment that condescends to believers and skeptics alike, but at least there’s an awareness of issues that matter. I doubt many viewers will find the movie’s answers convincing, but they might be moved to think about the questions. And a film industry that produces a number of problematic spiritually themed movies every year is more likely to produce a good one now and then than an industry that simply ignores spiritual themes altogether.

If there’s a trend at all, though, it’s a long, gradual one, not a recent surge. I can’t see that the current crop of spiritually themed movies is notably different from Hollywood offerings from the last several years. Hereafter is reminiscent of other (also mediocre) God/afterlife-haunted films like Dragonfly and Henry Poole is Here. Secretariat, from the Christian director of We Were Soldiers and the Christian screenwriter of The Rookie and The Nativity Story, plays like a cross between The Rookie and The Blind Side. Woody Allen has a long history of noodling religious themes, as does M. Night Shyamalan, the creative force behind Devil (a close relative of Signs).

I talked with Whitty for his story, and he’s got a couple of quotations from me in the piece, on the weaknesses that still affect Christian indie moviemaking, and on audience receptiveness to spiritual themes in mainstream movies.

In the Christian movie scene, alas, the message comes first, and story and character are secondary considerations. That’s a recipe for mediocrity. Truth has to emerge from a commitment to the characters and their story; it may be messy, but it will be more convincing. Here is a story I love: Marc Rothemund, the director of Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, is an atheist, but he told me, “I believed in God the whole time I was making Sophie Scholl.” That is, telling Sophie’s story was what mattered to him, and he put himself and his beliefs aside to do her justice. How many Christian would-be moviemakers outside Hollywood even understand that principle?

On the flip side, in the film world (including my department, film criticism) there is still a lingering perception of Christianity as the domain of reactionary moralists, Tea Party Republicans—or worse. (See Andrew O’Hehir’s outrageous assault on the perceived Christian/Tea Party/“master race” subtext of Secretariat for an obvious recent example. For another, see the savagely stereotyped culty Evangelical clique in the Emma Stone comedy Easy A.)

Granted, it’s a perception with some basis in actual Christian culture. Take the Christian review site MovieGuide, where all movie reviews begin with a lengthy content-advisory catalogue of positive and negative content and themes (preceded by a string of impenetrable abbreviations, e.g., “PaPaPa, OOO, FR, C, BB, L, VV, S, N, AA, DD, MM”). Too often at MovieGuide, “safe” movies get high marks simply for avoiding objectionable content. (Four stars for Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole and Prince of Persia? Three stars for Marmaduke and Alpha and Omega? Really?) Moral analysis at MovieGuide can verge on the Orwellian: Babies, one of the most delightful movies of the year, may have a “strong moral worldview,” yet it’s dinged for a “light humanist quality” (i.e., secular humanist) “because no mention is made of God.”

On the other hand, MovieGuide critics are capable of praising positive spiritual and/or moral dimensions even in movies with horrific content, such as Winter’s Bone and District 9. That’s a pretty striking indicator of the breadth of Christian interest in mainstream films of all kinds that take these matters seriously.

Christian moviegoers don’t necessarily want to be catered to (although it beats getting beat up on), nor do they necessarily want only safe, family-friendly, uplifting fare (although we could certainly use more well-done family entertainment). Many serious Christians are also serious moviegoers who would rather be challenged than merely affirmed—as would serious moviegoers of all stripes. Religious ideas, questions and symbols remain a potent part of the world we live in. There’s no reason for them to be confined to a religious movie ghetto.

Your points are well-stated. It is indeed difficult to find a film director who wears both the Hollywood hat and the Christian integrity hat to produce quality films that both engage the audience and honor God. Perhaps that is why our independent film, Midnight Reckoning, had to be made independently rather than fighting the Hollywood system, and why other Independent filmmakers are striving to create entertainment outside the mainstream channels until such a day when our craft finds a comfortable position in Hollywood.

I invite you to visit our website, http://www.midnightreckoning.com/
and ask you to consider how you might support our effort. Our independent Christian film has been well received and we are currently connecting with folks to determine the level of interest in this particular genre.

May God continue to bless you ...

Posted by John M on Thursday, Oct, 21, 2010 12:02 PM (EST):

Maggie, there are so many good films that have been made and a handful that continue to be made that there’s no real possibility of exhausting them as long as they hold your kids’ interests. They aren’t necessarily the ones making the biggest splash in the box office. Netflix makes a lot of the older movies or less-known films accessible. But if you want to restrict your children that much from what everyone else is seeing, you’ll need to find them really interesting and/or moving works, not just things that are “clean,” or they will just try to circumvent your authority. Steven’s a great guide, in my opinion, to finding works of artistic merit along with moral value. Of course, you’ll want to compare his reactions and yours on movies you have seen to get a sense for how you want to filter his advice. If this sounds like an advertisement for his site (www.decentfilms.com), it’s only because it’s truly the best I’ve seen.

Posted by Maggie on Thursday, Oct, 21, 2010 10:33 AM (EST):

I rarely go to the movies anymore because of the bilge they try and pass off as entertainment. Hollywood lost touch with the everyday person and I doubt they’ll ever truly find their way back to good solid clean storytelling again. The new ratings they use don’t help either. I remember going into a movie rental place and browsing through some old titles. Imagine my shock that a movie that was rated R when I was in 8th grade is now rated PG-13. I won’t let my kids watch PG-13 until they are 18 because of that. Some I may permit AFTER I have first viewed them to determine if they are acceptable or should be the old R rating. They say we control what they make but how can we when they don’t offer suitable alternatives and when they ignore the box office results that show good stuff makes more money than bad?

Posted by Victor Morton on Wednesday, Oct, 20, 2010 7:57 PM (EST):

I suppose I shouldn’t say this since I haven’t seen TALL DARK STRANGER, but how could the man who made WHATEVER WORKS, which is hate speech that considers itself a happy-ending comedy, possibly make a spiritually profound movie. Yeah, yeah—what good can come from Samaria and all that. And I would defend MATCH POINT and CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS as great films about spiritual darkness. But they were both about sinners who learned they could sin with a clear conscience. That’s not at all—indeed, it’s the opposite of—making a film about spiritual striving and hunger.

That Rothemund quote is brilliant, as is the point you make immediately following it. Coming from the opposite angle—a believer depicting a non-believer, rather than vice versa—I am reminded of something that Fred “Slacktivist” Clark once said in his scene-by-scene analysis of Left Behind: The Movie:

“Mrs. Cameron doesn’t approve of Hattie Durham’s behavior here and she doesn’t want viewers to approve of it either.

“That disapproval is evident here. And because we can see that disapproval, we can also see the person doing the disapproving—the actress Chelsea Noble. And since there isn’t room here for both the actress and the character, Hattie gets squeezed out. We can’t glean whatever it was that motivated Hattie to go to Rayford’s house and beg/threaten/negotiate for their future in this scene, because the only motivation we see here is Chelsea’s, not Hattie’s.”

Posted by Tony Rossi on Wednesday, Oct, 20, 2010 5:02 PM (EST):

Glad yopu mentioned “Sophie Scholl,” one of the best Christian-themed films in recent years.

Great Post! and yes, it is good that moviemakers ask deeper questions. it doesn´t matter how childish a person may be, still they ask deep questions. True, movies aren`t the solution to these questions, but it is a good start for many fellow Americans.

Posted by victor on Wednesday, Oct, 20, 2010 12:58 PM (EST):

I read your review of “Hereafter,” and it looks like I’ll be going elsewhere for my Richard Kind fix. “Winter’s Bone” wasn’t on my radar until now, but as it’s releasing next Tuesday, it’s at the top of our Netflix queue (in other Netflix news: they’ve just added “The Spectacular Spider-Man” to their Watch Instantly service and I’ve been going though those with our boys. You definitely didn’t exaggerate the merit of that show in your review. The web-slinging sequences are really cool, though I’m not sure human noses should ever be rendered that way in 2-D).

Anyway, this post here is excellent, as usual, and filled with the sort of insight that keeps me coming back to NCR and checking to see if you’ve updated your blog.

Posted by Daniel on Wednesday, Oct, 20, 2010 9:51 AM (EST):

I wish they would make better movies in hollywood get off the gay issue. Sorry to say those people are stuck on themselfs, They want to ram the slop down our throuts.

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Steven D. Greydanus

Deacon Steven D. Greydanus is film critic for the National Catholic Register, creator of Decent Films, and a permanent deacon in the Archdiocese of Newark.

With David DiCerto, he co-hosts the Gabriel Award–winning cable TV show “Reel Faith” for New Evangelization Television. Steven has degrees in media arts and religious studies, and has contributed several entries to the New Catholic Encyclopedia, including “The Church and Film” and a number of filmmaker biographies. He has also written about film for the Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy.

He has a BFA in Media Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York, and an MA in Religious Studies from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Overbrook, PA. Steven and his wife Suzanne have seven children.